Sonogram rule doesn't apply to budget process

Updated 4:47 pm, Sunday, May 8, 2011

AUSTIN — Texas lawmakers voted to require women seeking abortions to have a sonogram first. Sen. Eddie Lucio wishes lawmakers faced a similar requirement forcing them to weigh the consequences of their budget decisions.

The Brownsville senator, like every other Democrat, voted against the Senate's budget-cutting plan. He also voted for the sonogram bill because, he said, people “should understand the gravity of their decisions.”

“Unfortunately, there is no sonogram provision in our budget process,” Lucio, a Finance Committee member, told his colleagues. “No one is going to force us to visit people with special needs and say, ‘The services you need are being cut.' No budget provision compels politicians to tell single mothers working to get by that full-day pre-K has been cut.”

Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, said almost a quarter of a million Texans would be left on waiting lists for health and human services programs under the Senate version of the budget, which is expected to be trimmed back in negotiations with the House.

“This session we have already passed bipartisan legislation out of this chamber that protects life,” he said. “But this budget is not one of those bills.”

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That's not to say lawmakers don't listen to Texans.

They have private conversations and, sometimes, town-hall meetings. Budget-writers spend countless hours in hearings and discussions with constituents before making decisions they think best. Sometimes those conversations make a difference.

Senate Finance Chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, nixed a provision calling for closure of one of the state schools for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities after talking to a family who felt their child was best served in such a facility.

Ogden had other concerns as well about the proposal, but the family's plea struck a chord.

“They said we don't understand why we have to fight our own state to put our child in a place where we know he is better off, just because it's called a state school,” he said. “I said ‘yeah, you're right.'”

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Note to teachers caught in the state budget crunch: You're not fired. You're in transition.

Gov. Rick Perry may lay the blame for teacher layoffs at the feet of school district decision-makers, but The Texas Workforce Commission is ready to help. It has got a special page on its website entitled, “Teachers in Transition.” It offers information about applying for unemployment benefits, job listings and that increasingly important area, “translating teaching skills into non-teaching occupations.”

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Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst talked tough in an interview with the Associated Press's Jim Vertuno about how the budget vote may not be the last time Senate Republicans bypass Democrats this session to pass priority bills. He said he'd been planning the budget play — using an obscure rule to avoid a two-thirds vote — as a backstop since last October.

And he wouldn't say if he'd appoint any Democrats to the committee that will negotiate differences in the House and Senate versions of the budget, since no Democrats voted for the spending plan. If he doesn't, Rep. Sylvester Turner of Houston will be the lone Democrat on the conference committee. Dewhurst is eyeing a race for U.S. Senate in 2012 or governor in 2014. He recently added a new political adviser, Dave Carney, long the top political consultant to another tough talker, Gov. Perry.